Study: Implants raise surgery-infection risk

January 22, 2008|By Natasha Singer, The New York Times

Breast-cancer patients who had reconstructive surgery using implants immediately after mastectomies were twice as likely to acquire infections as women who immediately had breast reconstruction using their own tissue, according to a study published Monday.

The article in Archives of Surgery, which examined the medical records of breast-surgery patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis from mid-1999 to mid-2002, found that 50 of 949 patients acquired an infection at the surgical site within a year after surgery.

About 12 percent of the infections occurred in mastectomy patients who immediately had implant surgery, compared with about 6 percent of infections in those who immediately had breast reconstruction using their own abdominal tissue, the study said. In noncancer patients, about 1 percent of infections occurred after breast reductions and no infections occurred after breast augmentation using implants, the study said.

"The bottom line is that implants are associated with an increased risk of infection in breast-cancer patients," said Margaret A. Olsen, the lead author of the study and a research assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "The question is, what factors contribute to this increased risk, and what can be done to prevent it?"

The study noted whether patients had other medical conditions such as diabetes, but it did not report how many underwent radiation or other treatments that might have played a role in the infections.